Anger and Resentment Have No Place Here

I didn’t get enough sleep last night. I wasn’t kept awake by the results of a heated election. I don’t think, in the grand scheme of things, that one president or another will be the end of the world. I voted. I did my civic duty. I chose my position based on an understanding of the issues at hand, and which candidates I thought would do the best job representing what I personally believe in. In my opinion, this decision was much more difficult than what most people think it was. Other than one particular senatorial election I was able to cast a vote in, the issues of this year’s election were much more complicated than right and wrong.

I think I’ve made it pretty clear that I don’t just vote across party lines. That’s how you end up with a weak nation, split into groups of extremists. I’m against that.

No, the election was a tight one, but it wasn’t directly what kept me up all night.

It was the reactions of people I know that kept me awake.

Hatred and Anger are the Buzzwords of the Day

If you judged our culture by my Twitter and Facebook feeds, the United States is a giant pile of spoiled 4-year-olds. I’ve never seen such a large group of people incapable of winning or loosing with less dignity and grace.

The double irony of the night was the constant streams of “That’ll teach you not to hate, you evil, predatorial asshat,” or “What’s God’s will now, you bunch of racist, intolerant bigots.”

Yes. For some reason, my friends on the left decided that it was imperative to spend the evening screaming hate speech accusing their political opponents of spewing hate speech.

To me, that wasn’t only unnecessary, but it caused me to loose respect for them. It’s a dishonorable act. It’s spitting on your foe once you’ve won.

It’s the act of a child.

It’s the behavior that rips the divide wider and hinders progress.

On the other side of the aisle, I saw a split between a majority of people that were resolved to make the best of four years with a president they didn’t chose and a minority that act like the world is going to go up in flames and that the universe will collapse upon itself as Lord Bamodon, the Malificient arises to consume their very souls.

Honestly, though, the majority is just taking it in stride. Getting increasingly (and understandably) more upset as their continue to be called monsters and demons.

Fox New is Not The Republican Party

I’m just going to throw this out there for my friends on the liberal side: Fox News isn’t the Republican Majority. Judging everyone in the GOP based on what you see on Fox would be like if all Democrats were judged based on MSNBC. Trust me, you don’t want that. These are the representative voices of the people. These are news-entertainment freaks.

Consider: Fox News and MSNBC are to Politics as WWE is to Olympic Wrestling. It’s entertaining, it is a sport, but it’s not serious in what it’s spouting to the world.

The danger here comes from the fact that too few people realize that it simply isn’t fact.

It isn’t even fair to really include certain loosing Senatorial Candidates that I don’t feel I need to name (but may or may not be from my state) in the GOP. They said some truly stupid, hurtful, even vile things, and they were basically shunned by the rest of the party for doing so.

The World isn’t going to end because of Obama

I do want to throw something out there for my more conservative friends that are making a huge scene:

SHUT THE CRAP UP!

You sound like a freakin’ redneck when you say things like, “Doesn’t matter, America’ll end before 2016.”

That is all.

Maybe I Just Roll With Loud, Dumb People

It’s possible that I tend to associate with emotional extremists that are fond of their own words. I mean, that would make sense, given that I am one of those people.

Still, we have a responsibility to be more than that.

We all need to stay classy and united. Honestly, we’re in much the same situation we were in before the Election, only now we have a President with no need to worry about re-election (which is always a good thing), a Senate that is pretty close to 50/50 with many more moderates, and a House that, while still GOP controlled, received a clear message last night about how America thinks on a lot of issues that are important.

I, personally, am positive about the next few years. I think if we can cut out all the Red vs Blue extremist bullshit that we seem pretty damned insistent on allowing to destroy us, we might actually have a chance of fixing some of the problems we’re facing as a nation.

Published by M.A. Brotherton

M.A. Brotherton is a writer, blogger, artist, and fat-kid from the suburbs of Kansas City, Missouri. He’s tasted a little bit of everything the Midwest has to offer, ranging from meth-tweaking rednecks in massive underground cave complexes to those legendary amber waves of grain. When he’s not writing, he spends most of his time screwing around on the internet.

17 thoughts on “Anger and Resentment Have No Place Here”

The influence Faux News has on the Right is hard to over-estimate. Add in the whacka-do’s in the Limbaugh/Right Wing Talk Radio echo chamber (Glen Beck, anyone?) and while Fox may not BE the GOP, they sure do a great job of shaping the thrust of the Right Wing Fear Machine.

I do agree with much of the rest of your comments. I was at first mildly amused by some of the more clever “so there” posts, but after a while it looked like an outhouse that was overflowing…

Oh, God, Talk Radio is the worst, and it doesn’t matter which side. It’s like the radio was built for people that just want to shoot each other all day long but can’t get their hands on bullets.

I think when we give credence to the vocal minority like that, we justify their existence. Because the liberal/progressive/blue side thinks that the red/conservative side is Glenn Beck, they over react and push the right to overreact as well.

Thank you for posting this, Matt. You have summed up quite nicely my feelings on the matter, and made some important points for those overly upset or overly enthusiastic about the election results.

I, personally, am just relieved the campaigning is over, and in a few weeks we can hopefully get back to “normal” on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media. It shouldn’t even have to take that long, but it’s obvious from campaign season (and before… and after) that your earlier thoughts about our country being divided and “ripping apart” were spot on.

If we want change in the country, if we want to move forward, the squabbling has to stop. However, I fear that the indoctrination by both major parties will prevent that for some time. The Right, especially the Religious Right, are increasingly intolerant, hateful, and bent on stopping any progress that doesn’t align with what are progressively becoming extreme policies. The Democrats, for all their hope of unity, are doing nothing to help matters by rubbing the noses of the right-wing bullies in this victory.

The changes want to happen. The younger generations are trying to make them happen, but until our parents and the older generations begin respecting us as peers and political peers, until they acknowledge we are on the verge of actually running the country and stop resisting so vehemently, and until we learn to be more gracious in our victories, we will get nowhere.

I cannot say I wasn’t happy when Romney gave his congratulatory speech to President Obama. But I have been careful to keep any anger or resentment or nastiness that may have crossed my mind TO MYSELF. I want educated opinions to rule at the end of the day. This sums up so much about the truth of the matters here. We live in an angry place here and a “Red State” and I want to scream “We will RUN THIS COUNTRY soon. STOP IT. We need a new way of doing things NOW.” Sigh. I’m relieved that we have our President and that no, America is not going to implode. Its time people recognize simple facts as truths.

I’m glad you wrote that FOX is not the GOP. I am really sick and tired of people generalizing Conservatives and Republicans as being hateful, racist, intolerant, bullies. I am sick of it. That is not me. I am not that. I AM Conservative. There are a great many Conservatives who are NOT bad people and I am frankly sick to death that MANY on the LEFT (see I didn’t lump them all together) think they are the this party of perfection and goodness. No one is. Great post.

It’s no secret that the US has become increasingly right-wing for the last decade or so. (For proof compare Obama, considered a leftist president by modern standards, vs Nixon, who was considered at the time an extreme right-wing conservative)

I think a more accurate statement would be that Fox is the Tea Party Media outlet. They push an agenda that is so far right wing that even other Republicans are like, “WTF, Mate?”

Of course, it saddens me that this *is* becoming the majority in the Republican party as they push out and black ball less crazy GOP members, especially those that served under Bush 1 and Reagan.

On the other side of the aisle, I think the Left is actually weakening and crumbling because of it’s own inherent apathy, and is splintering itself into Academics vs Labor.

I’m still convinced this is part of the natural cycle of political parties, and I’m fairly confident that by 2016 we’re going to see a very, VERY different political field.

I already am seeing signs of a more moderate and willing to negotiate Congress in both the House and Senate.

Of course, no one wants to be the bad guy on January 1, when taxes go up across the board and the military looses $500 Billion in their budget.

What really always bothers me is this belief that you have to be a member of a rigid group to fall into a hate-mob mentality.

It’s isn’t okay to hate someone because they’re a Republican or a Christian the same way it isn’t okay to hate someone because they’re a Democrat or a Muslim.

This is America, the melting pot.

In my opinion, if you can’t get used to that, get the crap out.

(Not an accusation for you there, Tracy, using “you” in a broad “anybody” kind of sense. Just to keep clarified.)

I didn’t take it as an accusation. I get your point – just as I wasn’t accusing you in my initial reply. The GOP has a lot of work to do. NOT all Tea Party people are freaks though. Your more local ones – the ones I know – aren’t extreme. But there are many who are out there. They make it rough for the rest of them. Hate is not okay no matter who you are.